Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. Andrew talks to Bulent Atalay, author of Beyond Genius, about how Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Newton, Beethoven, and Einstein all shared the same kind of…

Given this year’s headlines, it’s unsurprising that our appetite for cosy crime continues unabated, with the latest title in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die (Viking), topping the bestseller lists. Janice Hallett’s novels The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, which also features a group of amateur crime-solvers, and The…

Imagination is the soul of great worldbuilding, and its execution lies in the details. The best examples will immerse you in a rich, deep setting, creating the backdrop that allows the characters and story to shine. Here are five of my favourite examples of great worldbuilding. 1. Lord of the Rings All right, let’s get…

Father says his daughter was assigned to read a book with sexual content for English class. SAN DIEGO — A local parent is speaking out about an explicit book that was given to his 14-year-old  to read for English class. The dad says he’s frustrated this book was assigned to his daughter. He was reading…

Kosumi describes his new book Imaginary Encyclopaedia as a “post-novel”, a work of literary imagination whose stories and characters come from several different time periods, start from a historical background and end up in an imaginary reality. He explained that he chose to write the book as an encyclopaedia because the classic novelistic form is…

The fun thing about this rhyming list is that I don’t have to limit it to fiction alone. It’s one of the rare lists I produce that can contain nonfiction, picture books, and board books all together. This seems as good a time as any to mention that if you’re a day-by-day 31 Days, 31…

Bengaluru: Many writers at the just-concluded Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) said the Covid pandemic allowed them time to dwell on aspects that they had wanted to write about in depth and come out with new books from their years of research.Political scientist and writer Muzaffar Assadi on Sunday said the pandemic gave him uninterrupted time…

image:  Jana Rüegg, Doctor at the Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden view more  Credit: Ute Rüegg Over the period 1970–2016, small publishing houses became increasingly important for the publication of literature in translation in Sweden. More than ever, Nobel laureates are being published by relatively small independent publishers. A specialisation in translations often stems…

The best books published in New Zealand this year, according to a bunch of good readers and books editor Claire Mabey. This year has been a big one for New Zealand publishing – I do not envy the current crop of Ockham NZ Book Awards judges their task of longlisting, shortlisting, and picking winners for…